Beware the Mermaids Read online

  It was a light crew today, most likely due to the fog that had rolled in right before happy hour. A few old salts were playing cards in the corner. Santiago was quietly finishing a crossword puzzle at the other end of the bar. And finally, there was Turk, the intrepid captain of Hot Rum, a rival racing boat, who was sitting by himself, staring out the window, probably contemplating how to take down Bucephalus in the upcoming Border Dash sailing race.

  The Border Dash ran from Newport Harbor down to Ensenada, Mexico, and it was Roger’s exclusive domain. It was his crowning jewel, the feather in his captain’s hat, and he had claimed the title four years in a row. Turk had come in second every time, usually by a minute or two. Two years ago, Turk had actually led Roger near the finish, until they butchered their last jibe at the famed final buoy, where all the boats made a hard left toward the finish line. Roger observed Turk from across the room as he ordered another gin and tonic.

  “I’ll take a bourbon,” Roger said to Clyde, the aging, mustachioed bartender. “The good stuff, not that shit you serve to the local drunks.” Roger sidled up to Chuck Roverson as Clyde poured a rocks glass of small-batch bourbon.

  Chuck, startled by the sudden intrusion, jumped.

  “Hey, pal, how’s it going?” Roger said as he patted Chuck on the back.

  “Oh, hey, Mr. Hadley. Fancy meeting you here,” Chuck said loudly and stiffly, as if he were reading from a script.

  Clearly Chuck couldn’t handle improvisation. Roger’s smile faded and he leveled his eyes at him, which clearly flustered Chuck, because he shrank down in his seat.

  “What’s the good word?” Roger asked in a more hushed tone.

  Chuck followed suit and thankfully began to murmur, “I delivered two citations. Both should cost her around eighty dollars. She hasn’t addressed them yet.”

  Roger smiled and said quietly, “That’s all fine and well, but we might have to speed things up.”

  “Well, she’s got a cat. That right there might be reason to kick her out of the marina. I left a citation about the cat at her slip on the way over here.”

  “Now you’re thinking.”

  “Problem is, I already said the cat was okay when we spoke about renting the slip.”

  “You’re the dock master, Chuck. Change the goddamn bylaws, my good man!”

  “Well, the problem with that is that it takes a larger committee vote.”

  “She doesn’t know that,” Roger implored.

  “True,” Chuck said. Then he added hesitantly, “Mr. Hadley, about that final installment on the money. I need it.”

  Roger slowly turned his head, as if all the cogs had suddenly fallen into place. He stared at Chuck, who was slightly quivering. When he spoke, his voice was just above a whisper. “You got thugs after you, don’t you, Chuck? What was it? The ponies?”

  Chuck nervously took a sip of his drink and didn’t respond.

  Roger chuckled and said, “I tell you what, I’ll give you the rest of the money the minute Nancy is run out of the marina. How’s that for motivation?”

  “But I need the rest. Fifteen hundred dollars by next week, or—”

  Roger cut him off. “Results, Roverson. I pay for results.”

  There was a sudden sharp crash as Rita, the waitress, dropped a glass from the behind the bar. Chuck and Roger both jerked around toward the sound.

  “Hi, guys, sorry about that,” Rita said with a sheepish smile. She grabbed a bar towel and began to clean up her mess. “Reflexes just aren’t what they used to be.”

  Roger looked her over once, trying to ascertain if she had heard anything. She continued to busy herself with cleaning the broken glass and then moved toward the kitchen. Roger watched her go.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said a deep, gravelly voice from over by the windows. Roger and Chuck turned. It was Turk, and he was pointing out the window.

  Roger looked and saw a weather-beaten boat tacking in the channel. The thick fog and shifting wind made it extremely dangerous to navigate the slim channel. Yet, here was a boat coming in. Under sail.

  “Engine must have quit on them,” Turk deducted.

  Roger moved closer to the windows to watch the spectacle. Chuck followed. Even Santiago, who had been quietly sitting on his barstool in the corner, looked up from his crossword puzzle.

  “Holy shit, that’s her,” Chuck said as he pointed in the direction of the boat.

  “That’s who?” Roger asked.

  Behind the helm of the shabby-looking boat was the figure of his wife, looking in all directions as she guided the boat through a series of tacks in the narrow channel. Then he saw Nancy’s crew, the goddamn Golden Girls, as they fumbled to help their captain; one even ran into the beam. Things were not going well for Nancy. Roger let out a low chuckle.

  The rest of the room was silent as everyone watched the boat slowly navigate the harbor, relying on sketchy wind that would come up, swirl around, and abruptly whisk away again. It made for an awkward line. As the boat got closer, there was a real chance they could run aground on the large rocks right in front of the yacht club. Roger could see the worried faces of the women. But he noticed that Nancy looked stern and determined. It irked him.

  “Nothing to laugh at,” Turk said gruffly. “Maybe one in ten sailors could pull this off without hitting something. Hell, if we’re talking those Port Royal posers, those clueless rich kids would already be crying and calling the Coast Guard. It’s impressive, what she’s doing.”

  Nancy and her rookie crew needed to make another tack that would bring them down the side channel that led to their slip on M dock. But it was a dicey move. A swirl of wind came from behind and caused the Gypsea to roughly jibe to port, sending the boat directly toward the keel-shredding rocks. Ruthie fell hard, her back hitting the cockpit bench. A palpable gasp was heard in the yacht club. Santiago moved toward the large windows. Turk remained seated but watched intently. Chuck and Roger hung back, watching without saying a word.

  Nancy recovered quickly from the unexpected jibe by oversteering the boat in the opposite direction. An unexpected warm wind came out of nowhere, like a gift from Poseidon himself, and spirited the Gypsea out of harm’s way.

  Roger sighed heavily.

  Chuck Roverson stood there, shiny from sweat, and said, “That was lucky.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Turk growled as he got up and exited the club.

  “She’s a damn fine sailor,” Santiago said as he looked out to the boat. “A sailor anyone should admire.” He then tipped his tam and also left.

  Roger fumed. “Kick her out as soon as possible,” he snarled.

  Chuck nervously nodded and scuttled away toward the direction of the door.

  Roger slammed his drink on the bar. Rita came out of the kitchen, put her phone on the bar, and moved cautiously toward him.

  “One more?” she asked Roger.

  He didn’t even look in her direction, just nodded and glared out at the darkening skies.

  Roger wasn’t accustomed to being bested, thwarted, or otherwise challenged, and patience was not his strong suit. He had been known to stand in front of a microwave oven, grumbling at the lengthy seconds it took to heat up a sticky bun. But this time there was an added urgency to Roger’s normal level of impatience. He had a meeting in three short weeks to prove to his investors that he had an ironclad agreement in place with the Coastal Commission, whose votes were needed to approve his plans to renovate the entire Redondo Beach waterfront.

  If approved, Roger’s absurdly profitable development would revamp the Redondo Beach pier into an upscale outdoor mall with shops and eateries and an enormous three-story parking structure that would eclipse the ocean views of an entire neighborhood of original beach cottages. The seedier bars on the pier, like Old Tony’s Crow’s Nest, whose character and decor had been lovingly and locally curated over the last ninety years, would be replaced with high-rent-paying chain restaurants, whose character and decor could be bought on Amazon i
nside two weeks. He envisioned money pouring into the city from locals and tourists alike. It would bring energy and nightlife and attract a better, more moneyed clientele. Rather than moaning and groaning about losing their views in the name of progress, the lousy residents should be grateful to him. They should make Roger the goddamn mayor. Most importantly, however, the project could elevate Roger’s company to a powerful statewide player. And the cherry on the cake of it all was a free boat slip for Bucephalus in the Port Royal Marina.

  Only problem was, the Bayside Urban Renovation Project was wildly unpopular with damn near the entire population of Redondo Beach. The citizenry hated the idea of their quirky little beach town being transformed into a Rodeo Drive by the Sea. The residents had nicknamed the development project—originally unaware of its own unfortunate acronym—the Big BURP, after the environmental impact report concluded that construction of this magnitude would likely further worsen the natural oil leak directly out in front of the pier. The oil came from a fissure in the sea floor that let natural oil seep up, leaving small deposits of tar on the beaches. If made worse, people would sit in the new upscale restaurants and watch wave after oily wave, along with a dead sea lion or two, crash onto the faux rocks on the beach as they ate sushi rolls featuring tuna illegally caught in gill nets off the coast of Mexico.

  Without the votes, there would be no approved plans, and Roger’s investors would scatter faster than vampires at sunrise. Roger’s newly formed company, Bayside Development, was highly leveraged on this deal and would surely go bankrupt without it. Not the anemic, toothless chapter eleven bankruptcy that merely reorganized debt, but rather the real and painful chapter seven bankruptcy that liquidated all his assets. Bankruptcy judges weren’t what you would call sympathetic, especially to developers who came in with big promises and no approved plans. He could possibly lose it all. The great irony—Roger winced and sipped his Scotch—was that Nancy was the key to the entire plan. Unbeknownst to her, of course.

  While most city council members could be seduced or outright bribed with lavish fishing trips to British Columbia or vacation villas in Costa Rica, it turned out there were still a few tree-hugging, Greenpeace-supporting hippies on the Coastal Commission who naïvely believed in the beauty and splendor of nature over the sheer pleasure of getting filthy rich. One of those hippies was Glenda Hibbert, a staunch advocate of all forests, sea animals, and most fervently, the beaches where she grew up.

  She was also Nancy’s old roommate from college.

  Back in the day, Nancy and Glenda had protested every manner of environmental exploitation. Roger had shaken his head as the pair chained themselves side by side to redwoods to protect them from logging, stood in front of the governor’s mansion to protest offshore drilling, and fought for a law to protect a blue butterfly sanctuary in El Segundo. Roger knew that if anyone could get Glenda to believe that the Bayside Urban Renovation Project was a good thing, or at least not an environmentally disastrous thing, it would be Nancy. And if Nancy got Glenda, he would get the necessary five votes, and the other four hippies on the Coastal Commission could all hop in a VW camper van and get naked together at Burning Man for all he cared.

  Not only did Roger have to get Nancy back in this marriage for more personal reasons, like having someone to properly launder his multicolored golf pants, he also needed her back to make this deal happen. He had to convince her that his project was the best possible vision for the future of Redondo Beach, and more personally, for them. He was certain his powers of logic would work on her, or at least wear her down, if only he could get her off that goddamned boat and back under his pitched-beam roof with its spectacular 180-degree view.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  NO GOOD SAIL GOES UNPUNISHED

  After their near disaster, Nancy steered the Gypsea peacefully into her slip. It was over. They had returned safely under sail. Nancy took a deep sigh of relief.

  “What’s that?” Lois asked.

  There was a pink piece of paper tacked to her light post. Nancy frowned. It was another citation from the dock master. The third one in as many days. One for adding a bit of carpeting to her dock so that her boarding step didn’t slip—apparently a no-no. Her second violation was just as petty as the first––putting a potted palm at the end of her dock. The neighboring boat owner, a very friendly man by the name of Peter Ellis, loved the addition. Alas, no plants on the docks. Another arbitrary rule.

  “Oh, it’s probably nothing,” Nancy said. She could only imagine what the third citation would be. She’d deal with that after the girls left.

  With the boat safely tied up, Ruthie, Lois, and Judy sat in the cockpit and waited for a debriefing from their captain as they gave proper gravity to the situation that they had just encountered. They could have crashed into the break wall, been crunched by a tanker in the fog, or the boat could have caught fire. So many dangers, so little experience. The girls were rattled.

  Nancy reconnected the shore power plug and hopped back on the boat to witness her somber crew.

  “Surviving an emergency situation like that one can only mean one thing.”

  The girls looked apprehensive and crestfallen, as if this maiden voyage were somehow a failure, or worse, an ominous sign of journeys yet to come. Morale was low.

  Nancy gave a stern nod and said, “Fireball shots.” She held up a bottle of cinnamon whiskey, and the girls all burst into smiles.

  “So, we’re keeping the boat?” Judy asked.

  “Hell’s bells, of course we’re keeping the boat. A little fog ain’t gonna scare us off,” Nancy replied. Judy still wore a worried expression. “Hey, hey, look at what we accomplished together. It was nothing a little ingenuity, skill, and quick thinking couldn’t solve. And soon all of you will have those skills.” As she said it, she bolstered her own confidence.

  “Cheers to that,” Lois said as she raised her fireball shot.

  “To skills!” Ruthie exclaimed.

  They had all downed their shots when they heard a knock on the side of the boat.

  All four women turned their heads to see who came calling.

  There stood Turk, captain of the Hot Rum. Nancy knew him well as Roger’s sailing nemesis. She turned pale.

  “Just wanted to say good job, ladies. That’s the first time I’ve seen a boat come in under sail in those conditions. That fog was like something out of a Stephen King novel.”

  “The Mist. I read that one. Good stuff,” Lois piped up.

  Nancy brightened considerably, grinned, and said, “Thanks, Turk. Means a lot coming from you.”

  Turk merely tipped his hat and sauntered off toward Hot Rum. The girls returned to the cockpit. Nancy sighed with relief.

  As soon as Turk left, they heard another knock on the side of the boat. This time it was Santiago.

  “Good evening, Nancy.” Santiago waved. “Well done on the sail.”

  Good god, Nancy thought. How many people had seen them come in?

  Santiago continued, “I came to offer my services. I can take a look at your engine tomorrow?”

  “Uh, hi, er, I mean, thank you, Santiago,” Nancy said nervously. “That would be great.”

  Ruthie, Lois, and Judy looked over the side of the boat. All three waved to Santiago as Ruthie lifted one eyebrow. He waved back.

  “Roger would shit his golf pants if he saw this,” Ruthie whispered, elbowing Lois. Lois snickered, and Judy stifled a giggle.

  All the girls quickly went back to their conversation in the cockpit to give Nancy a private audience with Santiago.

  “I’d appreciate you taking a look. Not sure what’s wrong with it,” Nancy said.

  “Say ten thirty tomorrow morning?” Santiago asked.

  Nancy turned back toward Santiago and said nonchalantly, “Sure. I’ll make coffee.”

  “See you then.”

  When he was safely out of listening range, the girls hooted, poked fun, and in all other ways relaxed on the back of the boat. This vibe was due in p
art to the sheer joy of coming in safely, in part to the fact that their maiden voyage was under their belt, and in part, despite Nancy’s protests, to the tantalizing development that Santiago, the foxy boat mechanic, was coming over to her boat tomorrow to “check out her engine.” Ruthie managed to put a naughty spin on it.

  “Stop being so crass! He’s my new friend in the marina. That’s all.”

  None of them bought it. And Nancy didn’t really either. She tried to repress a smile.

  * * *

  The sun was setting on the little marina, and after the girls had cleaned the Gypsea of all the leftover snacks and empty wine bottles, Lois and Judy carried the trash off the boat. Ruthie stayed for a few extra minutes to finish her wine.

  “You did it, kid. You got us back in safely.” Ruthie smiled at Nancy.

  Nancy’s answering smile faded quickly. “I was scared out there. I have to do a better job of captaining. And teaching you how to sail. Things could have gone really wrong.”

  “I know all your tells. I knew you were nervous. But Nance, you got us in, without our help. Imagine what you can do when we actually know what ropes to pull.”

  “They’re called sheets and lines,” Nancy corrected.

  “See? Always teaching,” Ruthie said encouragingly.

  Nancy half smiled but remained silent. Her doubt crept in and began to stir up her old demons, like the chills before a fever. She had spent the better part of her life making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, helping with algebra homework, and ironing golf pants. What was she doing here?

  “Stop worrying about all the things that can go wrong. And focus on all the things that are going right. Like that dreamy boat mechanic.” Ruthie nudged Nancy and raised an eyebrow.

  “Dread is my default mode.”